Joe Hildebrand unleashes on the Greens during Paul Murray Live on Sky this week

Another classic Joe Hildebrand rant

Labor can't help blowing themselves up

"Litany of policy, moral and strategic failings"

"Luvvies adored her because she called Abbott misogynist"

ON the evening of my birthday three years ago the Australian Labor Party pulled the pin on a hand grenade, dropped it down the front of their trousers and blew themselves to smithereens.

Since then they have tried to blame absolutely everyone under the sun for that action, except of course the people who did it.

The decision making and the actions of the short-sighted and small-minded ministers who moved against Kevin Rudd that night were so moronic they almost denote a mental disorder. The Gillard government’s decision-making since has confirmed it.

Julia Gillard forced Rudd to dump Labor’s emissions trading scheme, sparking a war with the left and crippling his authority on climate change;

Wayne Swan forced Rudd to adopt his mining tax, sparking a war with the right and crippling his authority on the global financial crisis;

Then when Rudd was caught in the pincer of those two appalling misjudgments they both conspired to decapitate him and take his place.

The predictably naïve inner city set who fancy themselves politically aware because they know the name of the prime minister made much of the fact that under Labor rules and the Westminster system parties decide who their leader is.

In fact, as true insiders have always known, the powerbrokers who facilitated Rudd’s removal used heavily manipulated polling figures to trick gullible MPs and ministers into believing their insane and Kafka-esque narrative about why a Prime Minister sitting on a 52 per cent two-party preferred figure had to go. In fact those in the Rudd camp believe some polling data was out and out faked.

That’s not in the Labor caucus rules and it sure as hell isn’t in the constitution.

Nup, that didn't work too well.

The same inner city flakes were delighted because they presumed that just because Gillard was a woman she must be a leftie and a greenie.

In fact her first moves were to stitch up a sweetheart deal with the big three miners, deport asylum seekers to south east Asia and can any action on climate change.

Indeed the one resource giant she and Swan pointedly screwed in the deal was the indigenous crusader Andrew “Twiggy” Forrest, the only decent big miner in the country.

But of course the luvvies still adored her because she called Tony Abbott a misogynist.

The Gillard government’s litany of policy, moral and strategic failings since is obvious and well known:

*Embracing the Greens’ deeply unpopular carbon tax - after boycotting her own party’s far more moderate and practical policy - to stop them from… what? Forming government with Tony Abbott?

*The twin diplomatic disasters of trying to offload refugees to East Timor and then Malaysia.

*Swan’s move to have a go at the miners again, starting a class war that put the whole business community offside and yet failing to even get any money out of them.

"Take your best shot". Picture: Ray Strange

*Swan’s insistence on running a Budget surplus at all costs and thus starving the cities of major infrastructure and then running the Budget into deficit anyway.

*Crippling its moral legitimacy and community standing by relying on the vote of Craig Thomson and, far worse, making Peter Slipper the Speaker of the Parliament.

*Throwing away the government’s last tactical advantage by naming the election date seven months out only to promptly fall into a poll pit from which it has never clambered out;

*And finally declaring war on the media because it thought it was the press that was making people think bad things about it and that really they were doing a smashing job all along.

To its credit the Gillard government also initiated big policies the country sorely needs. However it has been so atrocious at so many others that there is no way it will be around long enough to implement them.

One at least, the national disability insurance scheme, the Coalition has committed to seeing through and so they ought. Others such as the Gonski school reforms and the dental coverage scheme - worth a cool $10 billion between them - will almost certainly never see the light of day in their original form under a Liberal government.

When I started this column I was about to begin this paragraph as follows: However all that has now changed.

For an electrifying few hours this week there was the tantalising prospect that Labor was not hurtling towards certain oblivion and there was a chance, however remote, that it might actually win the next election on the back of a resurgent Kevin Rudd.

It was going to be a soul-turning call to arms that would have warmed all the hearts across the nation that Labor has turned to coal. It would have awakened all the lost true believers and convinced undecided and disillusioned voters that this new Labor deserved a chance.

But thanks to Thursday’s monumentally stupid and self-interested decision now that cannot happen.

Due to the selfishness of a select group of Victorian powerbrokers whose seats are all safe, not only is Labor headed for slaughter in September but there is a very real chance it will suffer complete generational wipeout as MPs across Sydney and Queensland are skittled like tenpins.

No doubt many will see this as a matter of principle or a noble death. It certainly won’t feel like that to the millions of people who were once Labor supporters who rely upon the occasional protection of Labor winning government and actually advancing its agenda. It won’t feel like that to the parents and children waiting for Gonski or the kid with chronic tooth pain whose parents can’t afford to go to the dentist.

I haven’t said much good about the Labor Party over the past three years because there hasn’t been much good to say. For a brief exciting moment this week I thought I’d finally get my chance but instead the party decided to once more pull the pin from the hand grenade and blow itself into dust.

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